Jeff Bezos v the world: why all companies fear 'death by Amazon'

The computer on which this article was written is sitting on a laptop stand that tells you everything you need to know about how Amazon does business. At $19.99 (£14.99) a pop, the laptop stand combines everything customers love about Amazon: utility, price and convenience. It's also a total and complete knockoff – of a laptop stand that the San Francisco-based company Rain Design began selling nearly a decade before Amazon decided to make its own. Amazon's innovation with its own version was to replace Rain Design's raindrop logo with its own smiley arrow logo – and cut the price in half. "All Amazon had to do was pick the best one and copy it," said Rachel Greer, a former product manager for Amazon who runs a consulting firm for Amazon vendors.